Last weekend Charlie Joe and I traveled to Virginia and Washington, DC, in order to order people to buy the book.

First up was a visit with the wonderful Joan Kindig, who has made it her life’s mission to read every children’s book ever created. She’s 87% of the way there. Joan lives in Charlottesville, VA., in a beautiful woodsy house she shares with her adorably rambunctious Corgi, Finn. Here’s Joan and I posing with some random book we just plucked off her shelf:

Joan has these amazing events where she invites a bunch of friends, students and kidlit fans over to her house for food, drink and an author. We yak, we discuss the book, and then a woman from Barnes & Noble comes and sells copies to everyone there! It’s awesome! It’s like a store visit but instead of six people looking for the bathroom, you get fifty people wanting to talk about your book. I love Joan, and her event. Everyone else loved it too, including these two kids who i definitely did NOT ask to pretend to be reading the book and laughing:

Then, it was on to Washington DC, to the legendary bookstore Politics and Prose.

P & P is a legendary bookstore that you may recognize from C-Span’s Book TV. For some reason, there were no cameras there when I showed up, but there were a ton of kids, since they coordinate their author visits with school groups. Brilliant, right? The kids were funny and bright and lively, and had hilarious questions, like “Why isn’t the prettiest girl in the grade prettier in the illustrations? You have low standards.”

Here’s a pic of me and the kids, which is also being used in the current BENETTON: READING IS FASHIONABLE campaign.

It was a great trip. So was the four-hour nap I took when i got home.

-tommy g